The Humanity of Animals and the Animality of Humans

Impossible?

They say it will be impossible for Bernie to catch HRC’s big delegate lead, but Bernie has proven over and over that just because something’s impossible, doesn’t mean he can’t do it. Bernie entered the race promising to take the big money out of politics, which is of course impossible. But then he just did it. In one year he has raised money on the same competitive level as all the other candidates, but without taking a dime from big money. This is an enormous political accomplishment, almost on a par with Obamacare or the Iranian agreement. It shows that the Bernie Sanders movement can indeed accomplish the impossible, which means he will win the nomination.

It’s a brilliant move to go after the superdelegates. He can say to them, look I poll better than Hillary against Trump and I can help make your job ethical again. That must be tempting for people who maybe went into politics with ideals, wanting to make a difference, but then just got sucked into the corrupt business model of both political parties.

There is no question that Bernie can win. The short term goal of our movement is to get Bernie nominated and elected. But the long term goal is nothing more and nothing less than taking over the Democratic Party. You want to abandon it if Bernie doesn’t win? Really? With 43 million members, the Democratic Party is the largest organization in the United States.

The 1968 Democratic nomination was stolen by Humphrey over the Bernie Sanders of his day, Gene McCarthy. McCarthy got the lion’s share of primary votes, but Humphrey took the delegates. An even worse steal than the one HRC may be trying to pull off this year. But the struggle continued so that by 1972, the progressives took control of the party and managed to nominate an anti-war candidate George McGovern. Nixon stole that election (Watergate), but McGovern wasn’t nearly as strong a candidate as Bernie is.

One of the reasons Bernie has had such a problem with the DNC isn’t simple corruption: he got into the party and the election too late to help determine the make-up of the DNC. Politics is no place for the naïve. Doesn’t anyone watch House of Cards? This drama is the most accurate depiction of the reality of Washington politics that there is. Underwood and Underwood are clones of Hill and Billery. It’s an utterly ruthless game, and we can’t get our tail feathers ruffled by some petty shenanigans in Arizona (as important as it is to make political hay out of them).

So regardless of what happens in the horserace, we need to organize our neighborhoods. We need to run for seats on the county committees, the school boards, the city councils, the state legislatures, etc. We need to seize the levers of power from the hands of the Clintonites and their allies who have sucked the progressive lifeblood out of the Party. This is the next phase of the revolution.

This phase includes the defeat of the most racist candidate to come down the pike in many a year, the one who inspires a good chunk of the masses to embrace racial violence and race war. Trump is channeling Hitler and he must be stopped at all costs. Racism is the primary tool that the oligarchy uses to prevent the people from uniting to challenge its power, and Trump is racism incarnate. We need to disrupt his every rally so he can’t appear in public any more. We need to challenge his thugs eyeball to eyeball, nonviolently at least until we start getting shot.

Maybe Hitler didn’t win, but he came way too close for comfort. The collapse of capitalism brings our both the best (Bernie and Black Lives Matter) and the worst (Trump and Cruz) in people. Let’s do all we can to get the best to win this time and to prevent the worst from ever getting a foothold again. The absolute defeat of racism is what this struggle is all about. The Democratic Party is an essential weapon in this struggle. Let’s seize it! Anything less is just pissing in the wind.

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Squirrels in the Wall

New book coming October 2019

Squirrels in the Wall―a novel told in stories by a collection of interspecies voices―presents a unique and darkly hilarious blend of human and animal perspectives in a single setting on a Wisconsin lake. The stories provide a kaleidoscope of heartbreak among both human and animal characters as they confront abuse and death.

“They call me Herziger, but my real name is Woof,” one of the stories opens. “They call me a dachshund, but in reality, I am just a dog. I live with my mother among a pack of wild humans in a big house on a lake.” In the second story, “Squirrels in the Wall,” Herzie’s “human,” Barney Blatz, experiences a fire in that house when he is just four. The stories follow Barney from infancy to death, tracing the epic, ongoing conflict between him and Father―a bumbling tyrant guilty of shocking abuse but also capable of poignant redemption.

On this rollicking journey, we meet a suicidal toad, a cat, two mice, a bee, grandfather’s ghost, and a turtle who possesses Barney in a climactic tale of environmental activism gone awry. Other stories reflect the points of view of Barney’s mother, sister, and older brother; together, they construct a collage of spectacular family dysfunction ― and of healing love.

Henry Hitz laces this riveting, thought provoking journey, Squirrels in the Wall, with dollops of juicy humor. Dogs, bees, a fox, humans, turtles, and other assorted critters–both dead and alive–all ponder, question, and wonder about that line blurring life and death. “Life is death’s dream?” Under the masterful hand of Mr. Hitz, we are in for a thoroughly enjoyable and informative read.

–Francine Thomas Howard, author of two Amazon bestsellers: Page from a Tennessee Journal, and The Duke of Union County

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White Knight

In 1977, a fireman named Dan White saved a woman and her babies from a fire in the Geneva Towers apartments in San Francisco. It is this scene which opens White Knight, the story of one witness to that fire, Barney Blatz, and his entanglement with the political and personal catastrophe which followed. With the November, 1978 Jonestown Massacre of 912 people and, three days later, White’s murder of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, the city and Barney unraveled. “There’s a bumper sticker that reads ‘Time is nature’s way of keeping everything from happening at once,’ but this November, it isn’t working.”

A powerful tale set in San Francisco during the turbulent late ‘70s. Hitz makes you feel that you were there, and shows how we came to grasp that ‘the personal is political’ and, alas, vice versa. An elegant debut novel.